"Grace, Grace, do wake up!" Betty looked at her sleeping chum in absolute amazement. How could anybody sleep so soundly on this, the day of days, when one should have been awake at six o'clock thinking over the delights in store!
Grace had come over the night before to talk over some minor details of the outing, bringing with her a new and, she declared, a specially delicious brand of chocolates. It had been so late when she had started to leave that she had been prevailed upon to spend the night with Betty. And so it was that on that eventful morning she lay slumbering peacefully in the Little Captain's bed, defying all that impatient young person's efforts to rouse her.
"Grace! Grace!" Betty cried again. "Won't you please wake up? Why, it's seven o'clock this minute! We have to be out of the house in an hour."
Grace groaned dismally. "Oh, Betty, I will have to have some more sleep," she wailed, pitifully. "If I don't I won't be fit for a thing the rest of the day. Don't you suppose we could make it if we started by nine?" she added hopefully.
Betty paused in the act of putting on a shoe and held it poised in the air while she gazed at her friend incredulously.
"Grace Ford, of all the——" she almost stuttered. Then, as a thought flashed before her mind she laughed delightedly. "Can't you see them, Grace," she chuckled, putting on one shoe and picking up the other. "Can't you see the boys when I tell them they will have to walk around the block while Grace gets her beauty sleep. Oh! oh!" and even Grace had to laugh at the picture.
"They probably wouldn't wait anyway," Betty continued, with the tact of a diplomat. "They would go on to The Shadows and let you follow later at your leisure. It will be a nice, dusty, hot ride in the train, too," she added, examining the lace on her handkerchief with the air of a connoisseur.
Grace sat up on the edge of the bed and regarded her chum reproachfully. "Nobody has any heart at all, and you least of all, Betty Nelson," she complained. "Oh, where did I put my slippers? I was so excited last night I don't remember what I did with them," and she began a listless search under the bed.
"They are over by that chair," said Betty patiently. Then went on: "Oh, Grace, dear, please wake up. You will give me the blues if you don't shake off that dead and alive air. Imagine Betty Nelson with the blues to-day."
"It is rather impossible," remarked Grace, regarding Betty's flushed cheeks and dancing eyes with admiration. "I wish I didn't need any more sleep than you, Betty. Oh, well, the worst part of getting up is over now and I'll feel fine when I get some breakfast. You just watch me."